In Pearson v. Gesner, No. 22-1227 (2d Cir. Jan. 13, 2025), the Second Circuit vacates and remands case where the district court erroneously considered materials outside the complaint. Even where a document is relied upon or cited in a complaint, the panel holds, it may not be appropriate in context to consider its contents.

Plaintiff filed a pro se complaint and amended complaint alleging unconstitutional conditions of confinement while in jail on a parole violation, including being pepper-sprayed and having his food contaminated. “Pearson attached a copy of the April 24, 2021 Inmate Misbehavior Report (‘Report’ or ‘Misbehavior Report’) to his Amended Complaint, with a note to the judge stating, ‘I’m sending the form that attach to the papers they go with my case! The papers is [sic] evidence for my case.’”

On their Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, defendants referred to the Report and two other items of extrinsic evidence—a video and a “Deprivation Order”—both of which defendants contended were “incorporated by reference into Plaintiff’s amended complaint.” The district court, citing this extrinsic evidence, granted the motion to dismiss on the ground that the officers’ conduct was objectively reasonable.

The Second Circuit vacates and remands. It holds that the district court erred procedurally in accepting the Report and video as incorporated into the allegations of the complaint.

“Generally, in determining whether a complaint states a claim, the [district] court is required to make the assessment based solely on the allegations in the complaint, without considering extraneous facts and materials. A plaintiff may incorporate allegations in the complaint by reference to another document . . . . But extraneous materials do not become integral parts of the complaint unless the plaintiff relied on them in drafting the complaint.”

Moreover, the district court must assess the purpose for which the document is offered, noting that that reference or attachment of a document does not automatically mean that the plaintiff adopts the facts stated in the exhibit. “For example, where the plaintiffs attached a document that they alleged was a defendant’s ‘self-serving document,’” then the plaintiff is signaling that they do not accept the exculpatory allegations.

“[W]hile the district court noted that it was allowed to consider extraneous items if the plaintiff had ‘relie[d] heavily’ on their ‘terms and effect’ . . . neither of the two extraneous items that the court considered met that criterion. First, while the court noted that the Amended Complaint stated that ‘the events ‘should be on video tape,’’ . . . that statement did not indicate that Pearson had relied on a video tape in framing his pleading. Indeed, his ‘should be’ phrasing suggests that Pearson in fact had not seen the video, and perhaps that he did not even know whether a video existed.”

Second, the Report was attached only because the plaintiff was directed to do so by the court, to clarify who the proper defendants might be. “It is reasonable to infer that he attached the Misbehavior Report as evidence that he was now suing the individuals involved, in compliance with the only instruction given to him by the court in its 2021 Order.” But the exculpatory statements in the Report sharply differed from the allegations in the complaint, and in context is clear that the plaintiff did not adopt those statements by reference.

“Given that the district court erred in considering—and adopting—the Misbehavior Report’s description of the events as set out in [defendant]’s self-serving narrative, which differed in nearly every way from the events described in the Amended Complaint, we vacate so much of the judgment as dismissed Pearson’s claims for use of excessive force and remand for further proceedings.”